The Fall of the Dawkins Forum

[DarthRavanger]

dr: . Josh Timonen:

Them BASTARDS! Are they the same ones as running tAA? 'Cause I can't tell the diff.

TAA was secretly being run by the Vatican. That's why TAA was so fugly, the vatican doesn't know a damn thing about art. It knows a thing about hiring artists, but it doesn't know a damn thing about art.

[Azmodan Kijur]

Sad to see the RD forums fall over such a thing. For those that feel that Dawkins himself is not aware of the issue, he posted to the RD forum (clearly siding with the asshat Josh):

A Message from Richard Dawkins about the website updates

Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat” a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.” Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails” down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.” And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.”

What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?

None of the above. What you have to do is write a letter like this:

Dear forum members,

We wanted you all to know at the earliest opportunity about our new website currently in development. RichardDawkins.net will have a new look and feel, improved security, and much more. Visits to the site have really grown over the past 3 1/2 years, and this update gives us an opportunity to address several issues. Over the years we've become one of the world's leading resources for breaking rational and scientific news from all over the net and creating original content. We are focusing on quality content distribution, and will be bringing more original articles, video and other content as we grow.

The new RichardDawkins.net will have a fully-integrated discussion section. This will be a new feature for the site, similar to the current forum, but not identical. We feel the new system will be much cleaner and easier to use, and hopefully this will encourage participation from a wider variety of users.

We will leave the current forum up for 30 days, giving regular users an opportunity to locally archive any content they value. When the new website goes live, you are welcome to submit these posts as new discussions. The forum will then be taken down from the web. You will not loose your username on the new system.

The new discussion area will not be a new forum. It will be different. We will be using a system of tags to categorize items, instead of sub-forums. Discussions can have multiple tags, such as "Education", "Children", and "Critical Thinking". Starting a new discussion will require approval, so we ask that you only submit new discussions that are truly relevant to reason and science. Subsequent responses on the thread will not need approval—however anything off topic or violating the new terms of service will be removed. The approval process will be there to ensure the quality of posts on the site. This is purely an editorial exercise to help new visitors find quality content quickly. We hope this discussion area will reflect the foundation's goals and values.

We know that this is a big decision. We know some of you will be against this change. We ask that you respect our decision and help make this transition as smooth as possible.

We're confident that these changes will improve the site experience and we look forward to seeing what you do with the new system.

Many thanks again.

You will notice that the forum has in fact been closed to comments (not taken down) sooner than the 30 days alluded to in the letter. This is purely and simply because of the over-the-top hostility of the comments that were immediately sent in. Note that there is no suggestion of abolishing the principle of a forum in which commenters can start their own threads. Just an editorial re-organization, which will include a change such that the choice of new threads will be subject to editorial control. Editorial control, mark you, by the person who, more than any other individual, has earned the right to the editor’s chair by founding the site in the first place, then maintaining its high standard by hard work and sheer talent. The aim of the letter is to describe an exciting new revamping of our site, one in which quality will take precedence over quantity, where original articles on reason and science, on atheism and scepticism, will be commissioned, where frivolous gossip will be reduced. The new plan may succeed or it may fail, but I think it is worth trying. And even if it fails, it most certainly will not deserve the splenetic hysteria that the mere suggestion of it has received.

Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

If you are one of those who have dealt out such ludicrously hyperbolic animosity, you know who should receive your private apology. And if you are one of those who are as disgusted by it as I am, you know where to send your warm letter of support.

Richard

My take? Complete and utter asinine bullshit. But that's just me. They took what was a vibrant community and killed it. This notion that all discussions must be on topic is beyond meaningless. I liked this mans books, but he is a terrible administrator and he is terribly delusional himself if he thinks this will foster the same level of support that his forum gathered.

[willow]

Like I said Dawkins doesnt give a shit about his "community" or the free exchange of ideas. I do like Dawkins near implication that the revamp was tangentially connected to the abuse heaped on the site admin by the forum community, given the mods explaining what trying to deal with the site admin was like. I wonder how ICM would have faired there?

I also like how Dawkins feels the need to then insult that community directly.

Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

A flat out statement in favour of censorship and against the notion of free speach or the free exchange of ideas.

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

The "editorial control" over threads is being given if I read the opening of the letter right to this "Josh" fellow, and he obviously has no interest in a "forum" based community.

I have had a hard time accepting the idea it was a resource issue given the income of the RDF (it raised more then 100,000 in web donations last year) then I found this which says that it is unassociated with the foundation itself.

3. Website. We shall maintain a high quality website (RichardDawkinsFoundation.org), offering scientific, rationalist and humanist information and materials. This document is on that website, which is designed and maintained by Josh Timonen, a highly talented and expert web site designer (see Upper Branch Design). Please explore the website to see the range of stuff that is already there. Independently, Josh Timonen maintains another website, RichardDawkins.net, which is not directly concerned with RDF’s charitable activities but which acts as a lively forum for the exchange of information on scientific and rationalist issues.

So the .net site is a side project not directly related to the foundation, but still takes donations, sells all his products and advertises all his engagements. It uses the same banners and actually contains considerably MORE content, lectures and products then does the "high quality" .org site which reads like a basic blog. The entire community and is bassed of the .net site as well. The .org site does not contain any messaging systems, store or any general content. it is, for a major organization very lazy work. I'm guessing that the .net site is where this josh fellow spends the majority of his time and effort and where the majority of the RDF's websales come from, given the foundation itself cannot or simply does not sell those items directy through its own page.

Im not sure if I can accept the resource argument still since the page is this Josh fellows personal side project, and he would then receive the profit of all the products available for sale on the site and as a "leading atheist webstore" I'm sure it does a decent amount of traffic. He would only have to sell a few books a month to afford the dedicated server space that DR suggested to me he needed to fix the forum issues.

[Seppe Cools]

Sad to see the RD forums fall over such a thing. For those that feel that Dawkins himself is not aware of the issue, he posted to the RD forum (clearly siding with the asshat Josh):

Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

If you are one of those who have dealt out such ludicrously hyperbolic animosity, you know who should receive your private apology. And if you are one of those who are as disgusted by it as I am, you know where to send your warm letter of support.

Richard

This piece of comment from Richard Dawkins himself actually proofs that he is indeed not aware of the issue.
As i've said in other posts: Richard Dawkins is not familiar with "internet community forum"-stuff. He did not grow up with it.

@ willow,
so again, this is NOT the fault of Richard Dawkins, but it is the fault of those who are the connectors between Richard Dawkins and the forum community, in this case: Josh Timonen

Richard Dawkins -> Josh Timonen -> Community
Josh Timonen has "killed" the community and the communtiy contacts both Josh Timonen and Richard Dawkins.
Community -> Josh Timonen, this communication is natural correct.
Community -> Richard Dawkins, here we have a "lost in translation" issue, since Richard Dawkins will not understand what's going on in the eyes of this Internet Community because he has never been part of such a thing, it is something that we grew up with, not Richard Dawkins.

The message from Richard Dawkins is therefore a reaction to the community as if it is a real-life community, (the kind of communities that Richard Dawkins has grew up with ).
But it's not, it's different, it all works differently, the relations in a online community are much different.


Let the following be very clear:
An online community is alive through the internet, through the network. Now this network, this connection, has been completely cut by Josh Timonen, killing the vains of this online community, and the result of that is "rage".

Richard Dawkins is not at all familiar with "online communities".
Instead, Richard Dawkins is familiar with off line and real life communities. In these communities, if you cut down the internet connection, nothing much happens. It's

something so trivial

as Richard Dawkins himself calls it.
What he does not realize is, that cutting the network connection of an online community, is the same as abruptly stopping any meetings of real life communities + blocking all the physical mailings between the members of this community.

I bet, that if something like that would happen to a real life community, then Richard Dawkins would not at all call it "something so trivial".

That's what's going on here.

Richard Dawkins is 69 years old guys. You can not (!) blame him for not knowing what the hell is going on in this particular problem.
If you do so ( willow ) then you are just abusing this situation to express your "hate" against a person you not seem to like.

[dr210077]

Ok I just found out that the Richard Dawkins site and forum was hosted on a dedicated server. After enquiring into the dedicated option for this site I discovered that we would have a monthly capacity of 3000GB bandwidth, given that at present we have fewer than 50 active members per month, I worked out, using our own bandwidth consumption, how many users would need to be hitting the site in order to start producing 500 server errors. (The RD Forum has been asking for help with this sort of thing for the best part of a year now), A paltry 600 users per month would produce similar errors if we were on a dedicated server.

I think people need to start realising that websites that are free to use, are squeezed far more than the youtubes and facebooks. It has gotten to the point were if a fledgling site can't compete with those bastions of the interwebs, and for the same price, then users take up arms, literally demanding what they think they are entitled to.

The RD forums were also constant targets for denial of service attacks which in part would have contributed to the decision to pare down the community aspect of the site, I would imagine.

I personally think they could have done things differently in order to change the site, but I am not privy to how they see the site evolving, for all we know the changes they are implementing are the best for them. I fully understand that their forum members are annoyed, but perhaps they should also be aware that they may be less important than they think?

The one aspect of the change that is utter stupidity, is the decision to vet discussions for relevance. People are people, and they need to be allowed to follow the natural course of a conversation no matter how "off topic" it may be!

I do agree with Dawkins though, when he hits out at the personal vitriol Josh has had to endure over this. Lets not forget that Josh is a human being with feelings, not just a faceless dictator, (no matter what some peeps would have you believe!). No matter what people may feel about the changes to a website, no one deserves to be publicly bullied for them!

[LilithLorelai]

I, for one, don't know squat about servers etc. and so I have no opinion about why or whatnot the site did what it did.
Seppe has a point about Prof. Dawkins being out of touch that I think is valid. My parents understand computers, etc. better than i do but they still have no idea why i participate in a forum or how that could be considered a community of any kind. It's just not part of their way of thinking about things. The younger generations have redefined many of those terms and, like slang, many older people (not nearly all,just many) have a hard time really getting it.
As for Prof. Dawkins being out to make money -I'm sure he is. This doesn't mean that this is the point of what he's doing though. Any time you sell something based on personal reputation or name or whatever you walk that line. (Especially if you are successful at it)

[Grimstad]

Given some of the comments in the last few posts I thought it was relevant to pull this up from the previous page.

In 2008, this is what Dawkins himself had to say about our community:

“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”

RD does understand what the community is about. Take a look at the letter from RD that Az posted above. He believes the very announcement of what was going to happen is what brought on the torrent of hatred. From what I understand there is a whole lot more to the story. For one, it was the unceremonious dismissal of ALL the moderating staff. Who the hell dismisses ALL of the Admins / Mods if they are not going to simply do away with the forum altogether? Josh could have been up front about it and given them some warning far sooner. But instead he was very underhanded. I get the impression that it wasn’t so much WHAT Josh did but HOW he did it.

RD is getting one side of the story and it’s lacking a few details. I’m just an observer in all of this. Personally I find RD to be a bit of an arrogant shmuck, but I think his efforts are good for society, for the most part. This story has jumped the forums and is starting to turn up in the press. I have a feeling by the end of Richards next fiscal quarter, we will see some changes.

[Seppe Cools]

BREAKING NEWS
- The true reason for the Richard Dawkins Forum downfall


Read it here:
http://christwire.org/2010/02/christian ... et-forums/


Article copied here:

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February 25, 2010 - Christian Prayer Forces Atheist Richard Dawkins to Close RichardDawkins.Net Forums

For years we warned atheists that we would take down their site entitled RichardDawkins.net, by the power prayer.

The atheists laughed and said prayer did not exist. They cursed us and said there was no God. I warned them time and again, and now, we see the true power of God as he has closed their sinful site, RichardDawkins.net.

For those of you who do not know, Richard Dawkins is one of the worst offenders before God. He promotes bestial relations. He thinks that a “less evolved” human man and a monkey woman had sexual relations to create us.

Evolutionists believe monkeys and humans procreated to give rise to you and me, and that this type of behavior is normal. That is why atheists also believe in such nonsense as homunculus, animals in the womb and why Richard Dawkins cusses in the face of Christians.

God has had enough of atheists and has heard our prayers. I would like to take this time to thank all of you who helped us organize the ChristWire Against Dawkins network.

That network alone grew to over 93,000 members worldwide and was able to raise nearly $15,000 in our capital campaign to fund prayer against the richarddawkins.net forums.

A special thanks to our friend and colleague Quoc Van Thai, who in addition to volunteering long hours to create brochures for the mailing list, also translated our materials on the atheist forums to Chinese for our Asian missions.

It is truly a wonderful day and let us pray the lives and “entertainment” sources of atheists continue to dry it. Those who stand against God stand against America, freedom and humanity. It is a blessing to see the atheists cursed and to know that a person filled with so much vitriolic hate as Richard Dawkins is have a miserable day. Glory.

When I organized the first ChristWire prayer day against Dawkins, this is the day of triumph I was shown. Praise to our Father.

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[Jnthn44]

and also



homunculus.... again

[dr210077]

Holy good fuck!!! It always amazes me that people in this day and age still don't understand so simple a concept as evolution! That these same dolts actually believe that prayer works, and that more prayers equals a greater chance of success, is disheartening in the extreme.